Roundtable set for clergy victims

Michael Wegs hands out a flyer to Immaculate Conception Church members after church Sunday morning. The flyers ask area leaders of the church to “break the silence” of sex abuse at the former St. Thomas Seminary in Hannibal.
Photo by Gerry Tritz.

A group dedicated to helping victims of clergy sex abuse is inviting the public to a roundtable discussion this evening on “pedophile priest culture and the diocese of Jefferson City.”

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The event will be held from 7-9 p.m. at Lincoln University’s Inman Page Library.

It will be hosted by Come to the Stable/The Stephen Spalding Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Marion, Iowa.

Wegs’ group also says it plans a 10 a.m. news conference today to identify six new predatory priests and to review the casework of eight new victims of former Bishop Anthony J. O’Connell. On Sunday, Michael Wegs, the group’s secretary-treasurer, handed out leaflets to Immaculate Conception Church parishioners as they left church. The leaflets urged Catholic leaders to “break the silence” on the sexual molestation that took place at the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Hannibal.